I bought this last week, mainly for the kids, because I liked Railroad Tycoon.

I played a few sandbox games and this is what I noticed so far:

1. It's cute.
2. You can't improve the stations
3. You can't sell bonds
4. You can't start a waiting train ("Wait for full load"). In fact sometimes you have to delete the train
5. The construction of tracks is sometimes tricky. There is no "undo"
6. It crashes from time to time
7. Trains very often take strange routes
8. It costs only 10 EUR

Another dumbed down classic!

Funko

20-08-2007, 13:20:35

I found all of that, the crashing thing was the main problem with it, I was enjoying playing with it other than that, I got used to the interface annoyances fairly quickly.

C.G.B. Spender

20-08-2007, 13:24:02

I also think the maps are very small and have only a few good cites to connect. You also start with a station at a random city, so if you're in a bad position you have to restart the game.

Funko

20-08-2007, 13:59:34

I mainly played the scenarios rather than sandbox, and there you start out in a decent city with specific goals to complete by certain dates. You can improve the stations in that... it just took me a while to find out how.

It's a while since I played but I think that if you lay track next to the track in the station it makes the station wider (you have to wait until the station lights up or something) and if you select a station by clicking on it you can upgrade it to one that loads faster/looks nicer, but the option is a bit hidden away.

C.G.B. Spender

21-08-2007, 07:43:08

Ah, yes. But in the old version you could buy nice facilities like hotels and restaurants at stations. This is a little one-size-fits-all. Maybe people were annoyed by micromanagement.

Funko

21-08-2007, 08:02:40

Ah ok. I didn't know that.

C.G.B. Spender

21-08-2007, 08:27:27

Hehe, what a cheesy look
http://www.abandonia.com/games/de/406/images/games/Railroad%20Tycoon6.png

Funko

21-08-2007, 08:33:41

I don't think I ever played it. I loved Transport Tycoon though. Just found that some people are making a new version:

http://www.openttd.org/about.php

MDA

21-08-2007, 11:02:27

I played a lot of the second one, played the third through and shelved it (you could "build" sandbox, but no "play the AI" sandbox, I think).

copy protection on the second was fun, you had to answer questions about train stats from the manual

C.G.B. Spender

21-08-2007, 11:25:22

You were allowed only to run two trains if you failed to answer the question.

"Where is that damned manual?!?"

JM^3

21-08-2007, 13:32:49

I haven't played the most recent one, but the first one was better then the next two.

JM

Resource Consumer

28-08-2007, 18:20:44

I have to admit RT II was a classic as I enjoyed the financial aspect strongly. Not being able to sell bonds means the game Sids.... I mean sucks

Vincent

28-08-2007, 20:25:53

Yes, that was very clever, sometimes it was a good idea to sell some bonds.

Now you can only buy or sell stocks (and the last few even for a reasonable price)

And no stock splits. Buy all stocks asap to avoid dividend payment and that's it

Resource Consumer

30-08-2007, 17:50:48

damn - next will be SId Meier's "Stockborkers Play with Train Sets"

Vincent

30-08-2007, 19:05:59

or "Sid Meier's sit and watch TV"

C.G.B. Spender

25-09-2007, 08:29:26

So I played this for a while. It's still fun to watch the trains and it's a very laid back game.

10 EUR is a bargain. If you have kids they'll love it.

Never do a circle line, or the trains will start traveling the world instead of taking the route to the neighbouring city.

If you're good you set up all the tracks and trains after 50 years and you can spend the the remaining 50 years doing the chores and occasionally replacing the engines.

Replacing the engines sucks a little. There is no "Replace all trains type A by the new train" button.

Sometimes it's not possible to connect tracks for reasons I cand figure out. If this happens is in the early stages of the game you better restart.

I had a few games where I did have a bad starting position in "sandbox" mode. Restart.

It crashes quite often, but it's not that bad, because there's a autosave every minute. Sometimes you can't even use the last autosave, because the game crashes over and over (for example when having changed the destination of a train). The 2 minute old autosave file will work in that case.

After a while laying tracks takes some time - the game freezes up to a minute! Especially when doing double tracks.

So there are a lot of annoying bugs, but still I play it from time to time, especially when I'm too tired to play a game that needs my permanent attention.

C.G.B. Spender

27-09-2007, 06:34:30

Another funny bug (?): When you change the destinations of a train, it sometimes disappears or hovers to a new station.

Funko

27-09-2007, 07:50:00

Has there been a patch? If there has I might get back to it sometime.

C.G.B. Spender

27-09-2007, 08:05:37

The latest patch

Sid Meier's Railroads! v1.1 Patch

Upgrade Sid Meier's Railroads! to v1.1 with this patch.

Updates:

* AI - AI now takes industry potential into consideration when making route decisions.
* AI - Changed AI's criteria for building new trains (now uses individual goods rather than depots)
* Functionality - Added new option "Use All Trains", which allows the use of all trains in the game, when in TT mode.
* Functionality - Added the ability to manipulate the camera freely when paused. To do this, pause the game and press "CTRL+F". In this mode, cursor keys move the camera and the camera can be rotated by holding the left mouse button and moving the mouse.
* Functionality - Cities can now accept raw materials directly from resources properly.
* Functionality - Clouds can now be disabled in the options screen.
* Functionality - Enabled terrain editor. To enable the terrain editor, you must add "EditorEnabled = 1" to your settings.INI.
* Functionality - Enabled larger size maps.
* Functionality - Exposed scenario timescale in scenario XML. If "iTurnsPerMonth" is found in the Scenario XML, it will override the default scale of 16 turns per month (every 4 seconds). If the timescale is greater than 60 (a new month every 15 seconds), the date display will also display the current day of the month.
* Functionality - Fixed rerouting cash exploit.
* Functionality - Made track selection easier. (track now takes precedence over depots)
* Functionality - Terminals can now accommodate up to four tracks connected to them.
* Graphics - Parallel tunnel tracks now draw correctly (no longer overlap)
* Graphics - Tracks connected to depots/stations/terminals draw with special graphics to distinguish them from "normal" tracks.
* Interface - Added new city routing icons and chevrons to show which stops on your route map accept the goods in your current consist.
* Interface - Auction window repositioned so it no longer obscures scores on larger resolutions.
* Localization - Misc. localization fixes.
* Multiplayer - XFire support added.

C.G.B. Spender

27-09-2007, 08:10:15

I figured out that you have to avoid track cicles at all costs. Trains often travel all across the country to avoid a red signal.

I guess the settlers from CivII got a new joc: railroad engineer

Resource Consumer

27-09-2007, 09:12:05

:lol:

Vincent

27-09-2007, 15:39:13

Oh, and I tried the patch. The game won't start after you installed the patch, because it can't find the DVD.

Yay, I got RCed!

C.G.B. Spender

28-09-2007, 06:57:40

Uninstall, reinstall, no patch - it works! Now that's what I call a clever concept!

Funko

28-09-2007, 08:34:25

Why can't it find the DVD?

Funko

28-09-2007, 08:34:55

Did you buy it online as a download and hence have no DVD? They had exactly the same problem with the download version of CivIV and patches.

C.G.B. Spender

28-09-2007, 10:15:42

No, I BOUGHT the DVD and it worked ...

and I downloaded the patch ...

and I put in the DVD ...

and the autostarts feature starts the game using the DVD

...and you get the menu where you can click "start game"
... and after that it says you need the DVD.

Or "Wrong DVD". I guess it's some kind of copy protection, which can be removed quite easily if you copy the DVD but not if you are using the original DVD. Like that.

I just reinstalled the old game (using the DVD I BOUGHT) and it works. Fuck that patch, I don't waste any more time to do the things Firaxis should do ("QA" - bruaaaaahahaha )

C.G.B. Spender

28-09-2007, 10:16:06

Originally posted by Funko
Why can't it find the DVD? Because I got the DVD, you dummy!